The Mysterious Cupcakes of Death
by milady dragon
Summary: AU - Armageddon-Verse. Someone has been leaving odd cupcakes on Death's desk.


The Mysterious Cupcakes of Death

Author: Milady Dragon

Disclaimer: I don't own anything here.

Author's note: Here's another Armageddon-Verse story, this one inspired by the TV show, "Cupcake Wars". Have you ever seen some of the cupcake flavours they make? Ew!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

* * *

It had been a rough couple of days.

Ianto was practically dragging his scythe as he made his way toward his office, his normally impeccable black suit rumpled and his blood-red tie askew and hanging free from his unbuttoned waistcoat. The plague on Tarsis Two had been particularly bad, but then they'd had two Armageddons in a row…Ianto couldn't remember the last time he'd Reaped so many souls in such a few days.

He was ready to sleep for a week. Being the Avatar of Death meant he really didn't need a lot of rest, but this had been too much. His energy reserves were depleted, and he just wanted to curl up in his and Jack's bed and hibernate for as long as possible. He'd even forgo sex with Apocalypse…which was saying something.

He had a few things to do first, and then Ianto was going to hide from the rest of the dimension. There was some last minute paperwork that he was obligated to finish, and then he was planning on showering and burrowing under the very decadent silk sheets Jack insisted on having on their bed.

They were wonderful against bare skin, but Ianto wasn't about to admit that. If he let Jack think he was right about something it would go to his lover's head…and not the one Ianto liked to play with.

Okay, he did like to play with that head, too. Just in other ways.

The office area was deserted; Ianto wondered where the P.A.'s were, as well as his fellow Horsemen. Probably already done for the day, he groused to himself. Death's duty was always heavier than the other Horsemen, and while usually Ianto liked it that way, today he just wanted someone to complain to. He didn't get into this mood often, but when he did he simply needed to vent.

Of course, no one was around to do that with. Sigh.

Ianto made his way into his office, hoping that Donna had left everything in order so he didn't have to spend much time working. Death had a strong work ethic, except when it got in the way of regaining his energies…oh, and his sexytiems with Jack, of course.

He got mean when something interrupted his naked Jack time.

Propping his scythe against the wall, Death practically collapsed into his leather chair, fighting the urge to lean back and put his feet up on the desk. And he actually would have, too, if not for the colourful cupcake that was sitting on his blotter.

Ianto brought his computer out of standby as he stared at the cupcake. It had pale icing on it, with a little scythe decoration on top. The cake itself was a reddish hue, and he smiled, thinking someone must have discovered his love for red velvet.

Seeing that cupcake put him back into a good mood. Yes, he was still exhausted, but knowing that someone had thought of him enough to leave a treat for him after such a long few days gave Ianto fuzzy feelings that Death wasn't quite used to having.

Ianto sighed, picking up the cupcake. A little sugar boost wouldn't go amiss before he finished his paperwork for the evening…

And then he bit into it.

* * *

"A pepperoni cupcake?"

There was barely contained laughter in Jack's voice, and the tone set Ianto's teeth on edge.

Then he ignored it to brush for the third time, in an attempt to get the taste out of his mouth.

"It was disgusting," Ianto finally said when he felt able to without reaching for his scythe and after he'd spat out the toothpaste into the sink. He didn't want to either use his weapon on Jack or spray spearmint all over the vanity. "When I find out who left it –"

"You'll do nothing," Apocalypse entered the en-suite, putting his arms around Ianto from behind. He leaned his chin on Death's naked shoulder. "It was obviously meant to be a present for you –"

"Or a practical joke!"

"– and you should just accept it in the nature it was given."

"And if whoever left it thought to rise up in the ranks by poisoning me?"

"Then they didn't have a clue…since it's impossible to poison the Avatar of Death." Jack turned him around gently. "You're overtired. I think you should climb into bed right now and let me cuddle with you until my meeting with Good and Evil in a few hours. Let your Angels handle things until after you rest up a bit. You're officially off duty until the day after tomorrow."

He began to kiss along Ianto's neck, and it was a testament to his tiredness that nothing below the waist reacted. Death really was in trouble if he didn't get a certain rise out of Jack nibbling on him.

* * *

Ianto was feeling more like his normal self when he finally went back to work a couple of days later.

He greeted Jackie Tyler – Pestilence's P.A. and Rose's mother – as he left the lift. The older woman gave him a calculating glance. "I'd say it was good to see some colour back in your cheeks again, but you've never really had colour in your cheeks to begin with."

"Yes, it's good to be back to work, Jackie," he answered, rolling his eyes good-naturedly. He liked her very much, and she was perfectly assigned to the prickly Owen…in fact, since she'd come to work for Pestilence after he'd gotten rid of his last personal assistant, Jackie had actually been able to whip him into some form of shape.

At the very least, the post-it expenditure had shrunk tremendously.

"Hey, Boss," Donna greeted him, not feeling shy at all about interrupting his conversation with Jackie. The other P.A. wasn't offended; in fact, Jackie and Donna got along like a house on fire, and it was just a bit scary to watch as the pair of them sometimes plotted around the coffee machine.

Speaking of coffee…Donna handed him his mug, and he breathed in the scent thankfully. While her coffee wasn't nearly as good as his, it was still quite tolerable. "Thank you, Donna."

"You're welcome." She pulled her PDA out of her pocket. "Now, there isn't anything big for today, except for some sorta conflict on Terminus…"

Ianto headed toward his office as Donna gave him his schedule for the day. He made a mental note to talk to Azrael and have the Dispatcher give his compliments to his Angels for doing such a great job while Death had been recovering from his bout of overwork. Jack had made it clear that he hadn't liked his Death getting that exhausted, but there really hadn't been anything that could have prevented it. One Armageddon was enough to tire a Horseman out, least of all Death; two had been just plain brutal.

He propped his scythe up in its accustomed place in the corner, and then took his seat. The computer was turned on, so all he had to do was wake it up…

And there was yet another cupcake sitting on the blotter.

Ianto frowned. "Where did that come from?"

Donna did a double-take. "No idea. Who's giving you cupcakes?"

"If it's anything like the one I received after the last Armageddon, I'd like to know just so I could Reap them." He explained about the disgusting confection he'd accidentally taken a bite from.

Donna shivered. "That sounds really gross."

"Believe me, it was."

This particular cupcake had a white cake base, with a dark red frosting. A black, tie-shaped decoration sat perched amid the swirled icing.

"I'm afraid to touch it," Ianto admitted, which galled him. He was Death, damnit! A mere confection should not be affecting him like this!

Donna leaned over the desk, putting her nose right up to the mysterious cupcake. "It smells like…" she wrinkled her nose, "fish!"

"Who would make a fish cupcake?"

She stood back. "The same person who would make a pepperoni one?"

"Exactly." Ianto groaned, running his hand through his usually well-coiffed hair. 'We need to find out who's leaving these. CCTV –"

"The cameras were removed from your office a while back," Donna interrupted. "You remember, I'm sure…"

"Oh yeah…after Jack found out that Tosh was recording us." That was when Jack had discovered that his Death apparently had a kink for performing on camera. However, a possessive Apocalypse was an extremely sexy and dangerous Apocalypse, and Jack had ordered all the cameras in all the places they might possibly have a bit of afternoon delight – and morning or evening, depending on the time of day and how busy they were – removed.

Ianto was pretty certain they hadn't managed to confiscate all the footage. Toshiko was sneaky that way.

"What about the ones in the outer office?" he asked, feeling as if the cupcake was lurking at him. "They should have caught someone coming and leaving."

"I'll run through the footage and see what I can find." She made a note on her PDA. "Do you wanna make some sort of announcement to everyone?"

"Bloody hell, no. The last thing I want anyone to know if that I'm intimidated by baked goods." Crap, he hadn't meant to admit that.

Donna simply smirked. "Would you like me to get rid of that for you?"

She didn't have to elaborate on what she was talking about. "Please do. And let me know when you run the CCTV footage, all right? I'd really like to know whom I'm Reaping and for what."

* * *

It didn't turn out to be that easy.

For one thing, no one showed up on the cameras that covered the outer office area.

Ianto even bribed Toshiko with his personal stash of Death/Apocalypse homemade porn into checking to see if the footage had somehow been tampered with, but Jack's P.A. found absolutely nothing. He paid her anyway, knowing she'd enjoy what he'd given her, with a stern warning not to let Jack know that she had it. Toshiko agreed; she knew what her boss was like just as Ianto did, and had no desire to suffer a personal Apocalypse for having the gall to see Death naked.

So, no one had passed the cameras. That left only one thing: whoever had left the cupcakes had somehow teleported into his office.

He had no choice but to put the cameras back into place, warning that his office was off-limits for sex until after the investigation. Jack pouted…then had dragged Ianto into the lift and stranded them between floors. Maintenance had not been pleased, but Rose had gone shopping on the money she'd won in the betting pool.

Two more days passed, and two more cupcakes – one made from tomato soup and Tabasco sauce, the other smelling so strongly of onions it had made Ianto's eyes water and his office stink until Rose brought in an industrial strength air freshener that she often used in War's office to ward off the rampant scent of sex that invariably permeated John's working space – had mysteriously appeared. Two more days until the cameras were installed in his office, in hopes that Ianto would catch the maniac putting the horrible things in his office.

Jack just shook his head.

"I don't see what the big deal is," Apocalypse said, sitting on the edge of their bed and surreptitiously trying not to slide off the silk-sheeted mattress. "Someone's giving you cupcakes. Okay, they're nasty ones, but still…"

Ianto glared at him. He'd set the cameras to recording the moment he'd left his office, and was hoping the culprit would visit again that night. "I don't understand you sometimes. You got jealous when Hart tried to woo me with different types of coffee beans –"

"I knew I had to warn him off before you Reaped him and I had to find a new War!"

"– but you aren't even vaguely upset that someone's leaving me treats at night when no one else is around." His eyes narrowed. "It's not you leaving them, is it? Hoping to get some sort of rise out of me?"

Jack made a dismissive noise. "Please. If it were me, I'd give you something that you didn't obviously hate. Besides, I know you'd most likely withhold sex or something when you worked it out, and I don't want to risk my Ianto happy time. I might not sleep, but not sharing a bed with you isn't the way I want to spend the night."

Okay, Jack had a point.

Death sighed. "I just want my office not to smell of onions."

"And you want, one day, to be able to eat a cupcake without cringing away from it."

"There's that, too." Ianto could be honest about that. He liked pastries, damnit!

"Then, after tonight we'll know who's leaving you the gross baked goods and you can say thanks, but no thanks."

* * *

When all was said and done – and when hours of CCTV footage was analyzed – Ianto had the sheer pleasure of seeing Jack go Apocalyptic.

"I can't believe it!" Jack raged, stalking across the boardroom like a predator angry that his prey had gotten away. Even Myfanwy was bothered by her master's tirade; the vulture sat on her perch, making an angry growling noise deep in her throat and mantling her wings as Jack strode past.

Toshiko met Ianto's eyes, sympathy in her expression. Ianto rolled his in exasperation. "You're the one who said he didn't care who was leaving them," he pointed out to his lover.

Jack threw his hands up in the air as he paced. "Yeah, but that was before we found out who it was!"

"At least it's not Hart," Toshiko said, folding her laptop closed.

"I think Jack would prefer it if it was," Death answered, leaning his hip against the table. "He could at least scare him off."

"It certainly explains the awful flavours," the technical genius added.

"You mean the Evil flavours?" Ianto teased.

"Well," a voice came from the doorway, "it's about time you figured out it was me."

Jack stopped moving, glaring at the being who was standing in the open door. "I can't believe you were leaving cupcakes for _my_ Death!" He was giving a really good impression of Good's 'Oncoming Storm' persona, and Ianto was finding it totally hot.

Evil simply grinned manically. "I was just trying out some of my baking experiments on him. Besides, I was hoping you'd come over to the dark side. After all, we have cupcakes. Cookies, too."

"I'm perfectly happy where I am," Ianto replied. "And please, stop leaving me snacks. I'm still getting over the acid reflux from the first one."

"That just means more for me." Evil smirked. "And I'll have you know that Good adored my fish fingers and custard pastries."

"Of course he would." That didn't surprise Ianto; after all, Good wanted to get into Evil's trousers. He'd most likely say whatever he needed to in order to do just that. Just as long as Chaos didn't find out, which would be a mess. If Ianto thought Jack got jealous, Apocalypse had nothing on River Song.

"Well, as my attempts at getting Death to come to work for me are doomed to failure," Evil said, "I think I'll take my cupcakes and go. I did think you'd have realised sooner who was behind it, though." With a saucy wave, Evil vanished in a puff of smoke that smelled almost like burning cannabis.

"The nerve of him!" Jack growled, still thoroughly pissed off.

"Please," Ianto waved the temper tantrum aside, "he never had a chance. I'm quite happy with being the Avatar of Death." He didn't add that, for the split second before he'd bitten into that first cupcake, he'd been unbelievably touched by the gesture.

"Besides," Toshiko piped up, "if Good couldn't recruit him, then what makes you think Evil would have had a chance?"

That seemed to calm Apocalypse down. "You're right."

"And he didn't even try very hard," Ianto pointed out, "since he didn't leave any indication on who had left the cupcakes." Death didn't say though, that Evil was the best at laying traps, and that he suspected that the length of time it took to discover the source of the cupcakes had been part of the test.

He got the feeling that he didn't actually pass, which didn't break his heart really.

"Besides," Death went for the metaphorical jugular, "I could never work for a being who enjoys onions in cupcakes. Give me red velvet and cream cheese icing any day."

The next morning, there was a box of red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing on Death's desk.

They tasted quite wonderful.

He didn't even share.


End file.
